The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

by Naoki Higashida

The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society’s near-pristine ignorance about what’s happening inside autistic heads.

But even if we’re ordered to keep our mouths shut or to be quiet, we simply don’t know how. Our voices are like our breathing, I feel, just coming out of our mouths, unconsciously.

My memory, however, is more like a pool of dots. I’m always “picking up” these dots—by asking my questions—so I can arrive back at the memory that the dots represent.

We know we’re making you sad and upset, but it’s as if we don’t have any say in it, I’m afraid, and that’s the way it is. But please, whatever you do, don’t give up on us. We need your help.

You normal people, you talk at an incredible speed. Between thinking something in your head and saying it takes you just a split second. To us, that’s like magic!

So it would help us a great deal if you could just use our names first to get our attention, before you start talking to us.

You can’t always tell just by looking at people with autism, but we never really feel that our bodies are our own. They’re always acting up and going outside our control. Stuck inside them, we’re struggling so hard to make them do what we tell them.

The reason is that when we look at nature, we receive a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies get recharged.

Just by looking at nature, I feel as if I’m being swallowed up into it, and in that moment I get the sensation that my body’s now a speck, a speck from long before I was born, a speck that is melting into nature herself. This sensation is so amazing that I forget that I’m a human being, and one with special needs to boot.

We are more like travelers from the distant, distant past. And if, by our being here, we could help the people of the world remember what truly matters for the Earth, that would give us a quiet pleasure.